What's Behind the
Return of Bookstores?
Just when you thought
that Amazon had finished off brick and mortar stores, booksellers are making a
comeback. Yes, there's lots of available, low-cost, retail space. But the
retail outlets are filling a bigger need.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL
MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@HOWARDTULLMAN1
FEB 20, 2024
It
looks like 30 years after the founding of Amazon and after decades of decline
during which more than half the bookstores in the U.S. disappeared, we may
actually be seeing a dramatic uptick in the opening of new brick-and-mortar
bookstores.
As a
member of one of the last generations that will ever buy hardcover, non-fiction
books (albeit primarily from Amazon), this is unexpected, exciting, and
somewhat inexplicable news. I've insisted for many years that nothing would
ever replace the sheer visceral joy of browsing a bookstore, the delight of
happening upon new discoveries, and the efficiency of visually scanning dozens
of stacks and shelves looking for new titles and those by familiar authors. One
of the last great creative arts in advertising and marketing is the design and
beauty of striking, surprising, and stirring book covers. Digital displays of
any size filled with stamp-sized jpegs, tiny gifs, and banner ads can't
compete.
I
don't care how many different ways Amazon tries to present its massive
inventory, there's simply no emotional connection or compelling comparison to
seeing and holding the material up close and personal. Online book buying and
paging thru endless screens reminds me of the painful and fatigued feeling you
get these days when you search for something to watch on any of the streaming
services and quickly become so overwhelmed by the sheer volume, clutter, and
crap that when you finally make a selection, you're inclined to give up because
you're now too tired to watch the thing. In fact, one of the worst aspects
about the overwhelming flow of new books and the pressure to keep up with them
is that it keeps us from reading so many of the older classics. 01:23
Part
of the psychology of buying books and bringing them home (so we can stack them
on our nightstands) is the unfounded belief that we'll thereby somehow be
creating the time to actually read them. The Japanese even have a word for
this: tsundoku. But, in any case, it's abundantly clear that you'll
never get the same satisfying feeling of faux accomplishment from hitting a few
keys on your keyboard. As fast as Amazon's delivery services have become,
there's still nothing like grabbing the actual goods on the spot to satisfy our
incessant cultural and personal need for immediate gratification although
ordering a book on my Kindle and having it available minutes later comes in a
close second. I will also admit that I'm holding out some modest hope that
Apple's Vision Pro will soon create a virtual bookstore in space, where we will
walk through an area and actually have the same visual and even quasi-tactile
experience that we've always had in a physical store.
We may
not see a huge surge in new mom-and-pop bookshops any time soon although
neighborhood-based, narrowly focused stores with tiny footprints and limited
specific inventories (like women's and children's books) seem to be popping up.
For the last few years, the few independent and small full-service survivors in
my area have seemed more like undertakers than caretakers. But Barnes &
Noble is aggressively rolling out stores nationwide while, interestingly
enough, Amazon has been shutting
down all of its physical bookstores and focusing more on Whole
Foods and some well-located Amazon Go grab-and-go grocery shops.
In
2023, Barnes & Noble opened more new stores than it had in the decade from
2009 to 2019, and in 2024 the company is planning to add another 50 stores to
its current 600 locations. I wonder if part of the incentive has to do with the
ready availability of large, open spaces and super attractive leasing terms in
most major downtown areas because of the number of retailers and department
stores that have exited. Hundreds of malls across the country have lost
multiple anchor tenants and are sitting with these very visible and prominent
abandoned spaces, which can't be a good look for any landlord.
It
will be interesting to see if anyone else emerges as another player in the
space. Borders, Waldenbooks, and Brentano's, anyone? Needless to say, if Amazon
couldn't make a go of it, the prospects for another successful entrant would
seem exceedingly grim. So, while it looks like an open field and an opportunity
for B&N to run the table, I'd say that a few words of caution are still
helpful, especially because these guys have been largely standing still for a
decade or two and basically just hanging on. Not to mention the Nook which went
nowhere.
The
management might tell you that good bookstores thrive while bad bookstores die,
but I'd say that it pays to be lucky, to have deep pockets, to stick to your
knitting, and to have cooperative and patient landlords and lenders. I wish
them well in their expansion efforts and look forward to seeing their new
stores soon in my town as well. But they've lost their way in the past and I
hope that in their ongoing and new execution they maintain their primary focus
on the books. We already have too many coffee shops, plenty of meeting spaces
and social clubs, and loads of toy and novelty stores. We don't need more
clutter, tchotchkes and confusion - we just need a simple and straightforward
place to buy our books.
